Heroine/scientist helps save dignity of a dead whale

At the California Academy of Sciences last week, Executive Director Jonathan Foley sent staff members an Earth Day story “that made me especially proud today.”

When a dead sperm whale washed up near Pacifica, an academy team was dispatched to study the remains and determine why the whale died. “Sadly, after we were done, some idiot decided to spray paint graffiti on the whale remains, tagging it for some motorcycle gang. ... But today, one of our wonderful staff members, Susan Pemberton, went back to take another sample of whale remains, and then spent time scraping off the graffiti, to help restore some dignity to this beautiful creature. That’s a perfect story for Earth Day.”

Pemberton, a curatorial assistant in the mammalogy department, prepares specimens for research.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle about the snacks before last weekend’s Open Studios at the Hunters Point Shipyard. Art lovers who are open studio regulars know that the artists often put out bowls of food — candy or nuts, sometimes cheese trays and the like — for their visitors.

This year, one of the city’s environmental inspectors decided that a permit would be required at each location where food is available. “You would have to comply with the California retail food code,” said a letter from the Department of Public Health to one of the artists.

After a bit of a skirmish (Larry Bain called it “another example of government overreach”), a compromise was reached, and the artists were told they could get a temporary food permit if they complied with Health Department criteria. These include a ban on such “potentially hazardous foods” as alcohol, “dairy products, meat, poultry, seafood, hummus, rice, beans and cut tomato and melon.”

•Suggestions for women on the $20 bill include Madonna (Julian Grant says she’s the original “Material Girl”); Barbara Jordan (“arguably better suited to be president of the United States than many,” says Ken Keep); Sally Ride (first woman and youngest American in space, says Norman Vogel); Mary Ludwig Hayes McCauley/“Molly Pitcher” (Revolutionary War heroine and true patriot, says George Barantseff); Rosie the Riveter (but Scott McKinzie says since women earn 78 cents for every buck earned by a man, the bill should be worth only $15.60).

•The star and producer of the production of “The Heiress,” which will be at the Point Reyes Dance Palace this weekend, is Sharron Drake. She is the great-great-grandniece of Henry James, whose novel “Washington Square” is the basis for “The Heiress.”

•Noting that the potency of pot has tripled in recent years, Dave Heventhal posits an explanation: “When I began smoking weed in the 1960s, we smoked to forget the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon’s expansion of it. When I smoke today, I do so to forget three times as many wars and three times as many nasty conservative politicians.”

The Smithsonian Institution National Portrait Gallery is a national treasure and “a playbook for individual achievement” and it’s time to take it to the nation, director Kim Sajet told San Franciscans at a cocktail party last week.

Sajet was here from Washington to preside over meetings of the gallery’s commission of advisers, usually held in D.C. Moving them to other cities is a step out of the box. “We have a brief to be national,” she told guests at a gathering hosted by Pat Kilduff. By 2018, the director hopes to have four exhibitions on the road at all times.

Half the budget of the gallery comes from the government; half from fundraising. Sajet encouraged “support of local arts organizations” but said that “if you also care about America, support the national gallery.” That was the most specific mention of the green stuff.

She focused instead on selection of the portrait subjects (people who have a “significant impact on America, good or bad,” including new addition Katy Perry) and her hope for melding art and science exhibitions, and for the hire of more multicultural curators. But you didn’t have to strain your ears to hear the leitmotif of the friend-making get-acquainted event was money.

P.S.: A few of the Californians in the collection: Domingo Ghirardelli, Rube Goldberg, Natalie Wood, Patricia Nixon Cox, Patricia Hearst and Steve Jobs.